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The English Patient | Introduction

The English Patient tells the stories of four individuals whose lives come together at the end of World War II in an abandoned Italian villa: Hana, a 20-year-old nurse from Canada who seeks refuge from the proliferation of wartime death; Kirpal (Kip) Singh, a 25-year-old "sapper," or bomb dismantler, from India who is a member of the British Army; David Caravaggio, a friend of Hana's father who worked as a spy during the war and was severely disfigured while a captive of the Germans; and Hana's patient, a severely burned man whose identity is the mystery at the heart of this novel. Each of these characters finds him or herself far away from home, displaced by the war, and each of them finds a quiet refuge in the abandoned Italian villa to reconstruct their lives. While Hana and Kip eventually develop a romantic relationship, Caravaggio becomes more and more obsessed with the patient's true identity: Caravaggio believes that the patient may not be English, as everyone assumed, but a Hungarian who worked as a spy for the Germans. Interspersed into the story of the lives of these characters together in Italy are each character's clear recollections of the past, including the patient's hallucinatory memories of a torrid love affair, of desert exploration, and of friendship and betrayal. The novel becomes a collage of memories that explores themes of war, nationality, identity, loss, and love.

Michael Ondaatje, previously known as a poet, received immense critical and popular acclaim for The English Patient. The book earned The Booker Prize for best novel of 1992.

The English Patient Summary

Chapter 1: The Villa

Near the end of World War II, a young Canadian nurse, Hana, is living in an abandoned Italian villa with a severely burned patient. Hana had decided to stay behind with her patient, who was too fragile to move, after her hospital regiment moved on. Hana does not know the patient's identity, but she tries to piece together his story from his fragmentary hallucinations. She thinks he is English.

Hana passes her time by reading to the patient from the villa's large library, as well as cleaning, gardening, and perusing books by herself. The war has left her emotionally scarred.

The patient remembers crashing a plane in the desert. A tribe of desert people find him and tend his badly burned body. They transport him across the desert as they care for him. As he heals, he serves them by identifying European-made weapons found hidden in the desert.

Chapter 2: In Near Ruins

Caravaggio, who knew Hana through her father in Canada, seeks her out at the villa. Hana had learned six months earlier that her father was killed in the war; Caravaggio knows of his death as well. Caravaggio, a former thief who worked as a spy during the war, tells Hana that his thumbs were cut off by the Germans after they captured him. When he wonders why they stopped at his thumbs, Hana tells him it is because the Germans were being forced to retreat from Italy.

Chapter 3: Sometime a Fire

A Sikh sapper (military explosives specialist), part of a British regiment, joins the group at the villa. The Sikh sets up his tent at the villa gardens. He is there with a sapper regiment to defuse the bombs of the area, which the Germans have left everywhere in the wake of their retreat.

Sometime after his arrival at the villa, Kip is working with intense concentration on defusing a bomb just outside the villa; coming upon a "trick" in the bomb's wiring he finds himself in need of assistance, and yells for help. Hana runs out and assists him, in spite of the danger to herself, until Kip successfully defuses the bomb. They curl up together, exhausted, in their very first moment of intimacy.

That evening, Caravaggio brings home a pilfered gramophone, and the foursome have a small celebration in the patient's room. Kip suddenly leaves when he hears an explosion; another sapper, Hardy, had been killed while trying to defuse a bomb. Kip returns hours later and finds Hana still in the patient's room. He crosses the room to be with her, snipping the wires of the patient's hearing aid so the patient will not hear them.

Chapter 4: South Cairo 1930–1938

Told from the point of view of the patient, this chapter consists of fragments of the patient's past: he had been part of an inter-European expedition mapping the Libyan deserts before World War II. In 1936, Geoffrey Clinton, a young Englishman, joins the patient's company in the desert, bringing with him his new, young wife, Katharine.

Chapter 5: Katharine

Told mostly from the point of view of Katharine Clifton,... » Complete The English Patient Summary